Tag Archives: avocado

Recipe Alert: Mamey Sapote and Avocado Salsa

2 Jun

securedownload-11Today is my second day in Hawaii! In case you’re out of the loop, I have relocated here, where I will be working remotely and producing a feature film I wrote the screenplay for. Now that you’re all caught up, I need to thank you all again for bearing with me during my lapse of posts on SexyTofu! Writing a screenplay and collecting funds via Kickstarter is exhausting and stressful and that’s before you add the whole “move to Hawaii” element in. However, I am not complaining, as this has been a magical journey and I have enjoyed every bit of it. Okay maybe not the packing. I loathe packing. Again, thanks for sticking it out with me, and for all of your support with my Kickstarter campaign. I will be writing more about the trials of a crowd funding campaign later, but for now, some recipe action…

My new place in Hawaii already has a garden started up, so that’s exciting. We are already producing eggplant, avocado, papaya, pineapple (yes, pineapple), sweet potato, a plethora of greens and an abundance of fresh herbs! I am in paradise. No really. Paradise. In addition to learning my garden, I have been trying to learn how to hula hoop, which has been fun and very embarrassing. Don’t say it’s just like riding a bike, because I actually don’t know how to do that either. I know, I know!

Backyard papayas! At first glance I thought they were avocados because I'm ignant and shit.

Backyard papayas! At first I thought they were roided out avocados because I’m ignant and shit.

At least I knew what this once was.

At least I knew what this one was.

Now that I am a bit more mellow (well, at least until we begin shooting in July) you can look forward to recipes featuring ingredients I am plucking from my own backyard. But if you don’t happen to have access to some of the more unique ingredients, like the mamey sapote in the below recipe, I will try and add subsititions so you can still enjoy.

Thank you! Er, I mean, mahalo.

Mamey Sapote and Avocado Salsa

Serves 5

1 medium mamey sapote (if not available, use 1 large sweet potato, baked.)

1 large avocado

juice of 2 limes

3 tablespoons minced fresh cilantro

½ fresh jalapeno or serrano pepper, seeds removed and diced. More or less to taste.

Sprinkle of salt (optional)

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securedownload-15Cut both your avocado and mamey sapote into large chunks. Place in bowl, add lime juice, cilantro, hot pepper and optional salt to bowl and mix with a spoon. Use to top something delicious or eat on its own, like I did.

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Hot off the plane on Friday, but happy.

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Recipe Alert: Eat Me! Avocado Lime Dressing

6 Dec
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Easy lunchtime salad: Kale, chickpeas, raisins, avocado lime dressing! Done and done.

At any given time during the holiday season, I can usually be found with my face in a pie. Any (vegan) pie will do. But in order to make up for my pie parties (also sometimes mashed potato parties, mac n yease parties, and post-sex Chinese food takeout parties) I try and get some clean eating in. In the summer, it’s so easy to munch a salad. The produce is fresh, and with all of the warm weather, you crave something cooling. While soup is a great clean eating option for winter-time, I try and get in a handful of raw veggie servings a day, and the best way to do that is with a salad. But how can you tempt yourself to crunch a salad when it’s 23 degrees outside? With an amazing dressing. While I will often accessorize my salads with just a squeeze of lemon in the summer, in the winter I like a heartier dressing, mostly so that I can look forward to eating my salad when I would probably rather be eating more pie. Continue reading →

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Happy Food Day! (A Rant on Barbecue Sauce, Milk Shakes and Russell Brand)

24 Oct

Thanks, FoodDay.org !

Today is national food day. Occasionally my co-worker, Nick (oh hey, Nick!) and I talk about how exactly one goes about declaring a national day. How do you do it? Do you need to get it approved? Is it someone’s job to approve the national days, or can you do it at your leisure? If so, it could be a disgustingly terrible way to hit on the opposite sex and make them feel overall uncomfortable. “Did you know it’s national Oral Sex day? There’s only a few hours left ’til midnight, baby…” ANYWAY, on national coffee day I indulged in 3 cups of extra dark Columbian. Actually, I do that everyday. And today is national food day, but so far I haven’t really eaten anything different. I will, however, make you this nice little list of my top 5 favorite foods, because I know you care.  

1. Avocados—Full of healthy fats and potassium, I smear avocado on toast, eat them with a spoon, and make copious amounts of guacamole.

2. Hummus—Hummus is a food group for me. I probably eat it every day. I make my own because—like someone with a heroin problem—my addiction can get expensive.

3. Sweet potatoes—Sweet potato kale soup, baked sweet potato, sweet potato fries, stuffed sweet potato, sweet potato curry. Sweet potatoes are to me what shrimp is to Bubba. (If you don’t understand that reference, we will never be friends.)  Sometimes I wonder why my palms aren’t orange.

4. Barbeque sauce—This isn’t a food, you might be saying! Oh, but it is. I like to make my own when I am feeling productive, and I put it on everything—tofu, tempeh, veggies, and all of the things listed above (BBQ hummus, what!?!). Sometimes if I am real hungry and have already spent my allotted grocery money, you will find me eating my version of a poor college student’s Ramen: quinoa with barbecue sauce. Yep. Nasty.

5. Anything that comes out of a blender. I am a smoothie freak, a green juice freak, a soup-in-a-blender freak. I chipped my glass blender a few weeks ago, sprinkling shards of glass into my pumpkin smoothie, and I nearly died. I think I texted about 4 of my favorite epicureans about the tragedy, Tweeted about it, and called my mother to whine (and drop hints I want a nicer blender for Christmahannukah…).

Today, to celebrate national food day (to me, every day is national food day) I made a  Chocolate Peanut Butter Banana “milk” shake with the So Delicious Chocolate PB “ice cream” flavor. (The ice cream was compliments of VegNews who sent me a complimentary coupon for spreading the vegan love and helping them with distribution via the VegNews Street Team. Thanks, VegNews!)

Ingredients:
1 ripe banana, frozen
2 (big!) scoops So Delicious Chocolate Peanut Butter Frozen Dessert
2 Tbsp Non-Dairy milk (I used soy this time, I also like almond and coconut)

Put the banana, ice cream and milk into a blender. Turn it on, pulse a few times—running it too much will make it very thin, and you want it nice and thick!—and pour into a glass! Enjoy while on lunch break while you serenade your kitten with Milkshake by Kelis. Or not.

In other vegan news, Russell Brand is now a vegan!?! Say what!? Another reason for me to want to slather him in sticky sweet foodstuffs and lick it off his skinny British body. Don’t worry Katy P, you can join too; there’s nothing crowded about a party of three in my opinion.

Oh Russell, I wish I was your pleather pants

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The Greasy Vegan: Not All Vegan Eating is Healthy

25 Jan

I don’t mean to shock anybody here, but it’s pretty easy to be an unhealthy vegan.

but, it says Veggie on it!

Need proof? Most french-fries are vegan. Frozen vegan goodies like Amy’s Kitchen can have outrageously high sodium counts. Some vegans eat peanut-butter all day long ( I call these the Skippy Vegans). Boxed vegan junk food (like Good Health Veggie Stix) are still nothing more than junk, albeit animal-friendly junk. Plus, if you don’t make a conscious effort to get all your essential vitamins, you could end up eating kale all day long and still be intensely unhealthy, with dangerously low body fat (these vegans need to eat more peanut-butter), brittle nails, thinning hair and bad skin.

So, for starter-kit vegans or even long time kale-crunchers who aren’t feeling their best, here are some tips:

If you’re just starting out, write what you eat. It might seem a little OCD (okay, anal) but it will allow you to look back on what you ate that day/week and thing “gee, I didn’t get enough protein,” or “holy soy! I need to cut back on the tofu,” or “more greens, please.” Eventually this will become second nature, but for now, make a little log.

Watch your  fat. Things like nuts, avocados and coconut milk are delicious and high in  healthy (HDL) fats, and this is great. However, they also contain some saturated fats (LDL) (especially coconuts) and if you decide to eat them everyday all day your body will not thank you. Take a look at serving sizes — if that cherished can of coconut milk says that 1/4 cup has 50% of your saturated fat and you have been dumping a cup into your morning smoothie everyday, you may want to re-evaluate the situation.

image by sugarshakes

Greens, greens, greens! If you’re not on a b-12 supplement than you should be eating buckets of greens daily. Some easy ways to do so are enjoying a green smoothie in the morning, some sautéed greens with most meals (it’s impressive how an entire bag of spinach cooks down to a few scrumptious mouthfuls) and of course, raw salads as often as you can. Go buy a salad bowl as big as your head and stuff it  with cruciferous tidbits.

Be a protein machine! Make sure to include things like beans, peas, high-protein veggies (broccoli, asparagus, greens) and whole grains into your diet daily. Nuts and seeds are great too, but remember to mind the fat.

Now, once you’ve made sure you’re giving your body what it needs, please do indulge. A life without chocolate cake and waffles is no life at all….

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